


Shotgun

by Arevhat



Category: Farscape
Genre: Depression, Gen, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Psychological Trauma, Rape Aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arevhat/pseuds/Arevhat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chiana misses easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shotgun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScorpSik](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ScorpSik).



There is another off-worlder, his face cloaked in flesh, his name wet sand in her throat.  Twelve arns planet-side and  _E’Alet_  is everywhere she is, pretending he isn’t studying her in the street, the market, that he hasn’t followed her to the baths or into the forest.  
  
She runs then, the rusted earth soft and crumbling beneath her feet.  
  
*  
  
Inside the alehouse, he eats his meat in silence and sucks the marrow from the bones.  She swirls her intoxicant in her glass and asks him what he wants with her, with this hezmank of a world.  
  
“You misunderstand,” he says.  His smile is unctuous.  “The Prefect petitions me.”  
  
Chiana pictures herself smashing her glass into his teeth, and smiles too.  
  
*  
  
Two more rounds and E’Alet’s speech seems to thrum, black sound building behind her eyes.  Chiana blinks, breaks the vibration with a shake of her head, but her restlessness remains.  
     
The alehouse is thick with men even at this early arn; most stare through her, mugs of warm malt liquor in their hands, bits of fried egg and bread sticking to their lips.  It’s a thousand metras to the coast but someone’s painted a boat above the bar, an ugly smudge swallowed by the sea.    
  
There had been a port tavern, she remembers, one of a dozen on their way back to the burial grounds, with the same sour, musty smell.  She had been silent then, numb but for Rygel beside her and a soreness in her chest, sharpening with each uneven breath.  
  
She could scream now, Chiana knows.  Scream until she chokes on it, this terrible thing they left inside; but Pilot is sick-eyed and sluggish, Moya forced to sleep by a frelled filtration system, and this –   
  
 _This is serious this time, Chiana._  
  
*  
   
E’Alet says, “Do you see the clansman, there?” and Chiana follows the line of his finger to a boy two, maybe three, cycles younger than she.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“A chieftain’s son.”  He pauses, more sly than solicitous.  “One who would enjoy your company.”  
  
“Yeah?”  She grinds her glass against the bar.  “These – these greebols have rules, remember?  Be bland, behave, and for boredom’s sake, don’t frell the animals?”  
  
E’Alet snorts.  “When have the rules ever been meant for the ruling class?”  
  
Chiana downs her drink as memory snarls, the cold curves of Establishment insignia entwined with the ashen scent of a control collar shock, skin on skin and the soft, distant sounds of the casino.   
  
 _No._  
  
She reaches for another drink, another memory, another softness; for Aeryn’s skin against hers, her face held in Aeryn’s hands and Aeryn says,  _Men are easy because you are._  
  
 _You say that like it’s a bad thing,_  Chiana says, and Aeryn laughs because she doesn’t understand.  
  
Easy’s gone, torn to pieces in the dark.  
  
E’Alet beckons to the boy and Chiana remembers another rule, the first rule.  
  
 _Be fearless, little sister.  Be brave._  
  
*  
  
The air in the barn is heavy with the smell of earth and dung, the midday sun bleeding through the walls.  
  
The boy has a union band on his thumb and a sureness in his touch; straw snaps under their boots, Chiana’s body, as he presses her against the bales.  
  
His tongue is hot against her skin; she speaks for a microt in Crichton’s, in strange, skittish syllables.  “Who – who’s your daddy?”  
  
“Mmm?”  
  
“Your father.”  Chiana shifts, creating a space between their bodies.  Her hands fumble with the fasteners on his coat, his trousers.  “He’s not a chieftain.”  
  
“No,” the boy says.  His eyes are sheepish.  He thrusts his hand between her thighs and she stifles a hiss.  “He’s a farmer.”  
  
“Prowsa?”  
  
“Ucuz.  Are you angry?”  
  
 _Anger is a crutch we must learn to walk without,_  Zhaan says, and this memory is stained blue on blue, as brittle as dead leaves.   
  
Chiana laughs.    
  
*  
  
The first planet in twenty with water and her body is a desert, wild and unforgiving.  It will not     
  
She cannot    
  
*  
  
 _Stop._  
  
*  
  
Chiana misses easy.  
  
 _Noth – nothin’ new,_  she’d told Crichton; but this is new, this wound she can’t keep closed.  She’d wanted to tell him on Elack, wanted to tell him how this time, this time she didn’t bend, this time she  _broke_ , how all the ways she knew to soothe the hurt were broken too; but the words had stuck in her throat again and again.   
  
She’d felt better in the game.  So much better she’d brought the porn blob to bed, half-sick with greed, going nowhere fast.  She’d propositioned the bounty hunter, half-mad with bravado; the threat of force, his blade against her face, and for a microt she had been breathless, wanton.   
  
So close to some kind of whole.  
  
 _They frelled with you, Pip,_  Crichton would say.   _Six ways to Sunday.  Let’s get out of this dead place;_  but Crichton isn’t here and she – she’s an ugly smudge, swallowed by the sea.  
  
“You’re not going to say anything, are you?”  The boy fastens his trousers, fusses with his union band.  He makes no move to help her up, so she sits.  “To anyone?”      
  
“No.”  
  
“Good.”  He smiles.  “Good.  I like you.  I think –  I think my friends would like you too.”  
  
 _That dog won’t hunt,_  Crichton says.  
  
Chiana shrugs.    
  
*  
  
Inside the casino –  
  
 _No._  
  
*  
  
Outside the casino she had been lost.  Torn open and ransacked, thrown out with the trash.  _Nerri,_  she’d thought, because they’d taken everything else.   _Nerri, Nerri, Nerri._  
  
But it had been Rygel who found her.  Rygel who had said  _come on, girl, we’re going home_  and pushed her towards Moya, pushed her to eat and breathe and move and speak until she pushed back.    
  
 _Come on, girl.  Is that all you’ve got?_  
  
No.  
  
One of the boys tosses her a coin and she hurls it back, bright orange blood spurting from his brow.  
  
There’s a yell of pain, of  _frelling whore_ ; but she’s already thrown open the door, the sun in her eyes, her heart beating against the cage of her ribs.  
  
*  
  
Crichton says, “Jesus Christ, Chiana.”  
  
He squats in front of her chair and she digs her nails into her arms, the toes of her boots into the floor.  She can hear D’Argo outside, the low timbre of his voice calm in contrast with the crowd.  Aeryn is playing with the safety on her pulse pistol.   _Click-click-click._  
  
“I was just havin’ fun,” Chiana says.  The lie tastes more like the truth with every repetition.  She shakes her hair from her eyes, searches his face and finds Grayza there.  “I had to,” she says.  “You  –  you understand.”  
  
He does.  She knows he does.    
  
“No.”  
  
It isn’t the worst thing he’s ever said to her, it isn’t sudden, sticky fear and  _is that why your family abandoned you?_  and the awful crush of his body against hers, but it’s close.  
  
Sex and fear and love and drugs and fists and guns and words – there is no shortage of weapons in the world.  She licks her lips.  “So you  _can_  say no.”  
  
Crichton’s eyes are tired, his mouth drawn.  He clenches his fists and for a microt Chiana hopes he’ll hit her.  Instead he stands and stalks out of the church.   
  
Aeryn frowns but doesn’t speak.  
  
 _Click-click-click._  
  



End file.
